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Principal Figgins
Principal Figgins (First Name Unknown) is the Indian-American principal of William McKinley High School and has been for 19 years. Principal Figgins is portrayed by Iqbal Theba. Biography Figgins is the principal of William McKinley High School, a job that he takes very seriously. Although sometimes appearing unreasonable and a cheapskate, Figgins has the students' best interest at heart, as long as it doesn't cost the school too much money. He used to work for Mumbai Airlines, filming in-flight safety videos. He is highly religious, as seen in Showmance. He often uses the term "my hands are tied", usually when speaking to Will Schuester. Season One Principal Figgins works as the head of William McKinley High School. He is also in charge of handling the school's budget. As a result of constantly worrying about the school funding, Figgins comes off as unnecessarily cheap with the money. At the start of the series, Figgins is uneasy about the idea of allowing Will Schuester to restart the Glee Club, particularly after having to fire the previous teacher Sandy Ryerson, who had been caught by Rachel Berry touching a male student inappropriately. However, Will argues his case, and Figgins agrees that if Will can form a group that will place at Regionals, he will allow the club to continue. If the group fails, it will disband. Sue Sylvester, who runs the school's cheerleading group the Cheerios, becomes infuriated at Figgins taking money away from the Cheerios budget for the Glee Club, thus sparking Sue's hatred of the group and her constant scheming to have the group destroyed. Although Figgins does not particularly like Sue, he does seem more inclined to believe her and trust her judgment, due to the fact that she has brought the school a great deal of glory and prestige. However, Sue starts to damage their arrangement, when she blackmails him by saying she will post an embarrassing video of him doing a sock commercial for Mumbai Airlines on YouTube if he doesn't do as she says, such as rehiring Sandy as the school's head of arts. In the end this plan fails as Figgins puts the ad online himself, and gets a lackluster response to it. Figgins almost ends the Glee Club at the end of Mattress when the Glee kids do a commercial. In gratitude, the mattress store sent the kids a set of mattresses, which was considered payment and took away their amateur standing. Mr. Schuester however took the blame for getting the mattresses, and as a result he was fired from the Glee Club. Later in Sectionals, Will would be rehired after Figgins discovered that Sue, in an attempt to again destroy the Glee Club, had given the Sectionals setlist to the opposing schools. As a result, he suspends Sue for 5 months, much to Will's thanks, who is then rehired as the Glee club director. In Theatricality, it is revealed Figgins believes Tina Cohen-Chang is a vampire (he believes that vampires actually exist) based on her gothic style of dress, so he orders her to find a new style. Later in the episode, Tina successfully pretends to be a vampire in order to threaten Principal Figgins into letting her dress how she wants. In Funk, Figgins plans on expelling Puck and Finn after they slash the tires of Vocal Adrenaline's Range Rovers, but Shelby Corcoran tells him that she does not want Puck and Finn expelled. After Shelby, Finn, and Puck agree that Puck and Finn will get jobs to pay for the damages, Figgins hits on Shelby, complimenting her on her attitude and her looks. This causes Shelby to walk out of his office. Season Two In The Substitute, Figgins gets sick due to Sue's scheming and Sue takes over as principal. Happy about Sue's stance on junk food (outlawing tater tots), the school board fires Principal Figgins and hires Sue as full-time principal. However, Sue announces in Furt that she is resigning to protest the rescinding of Dave Karofsky's expulsion, allowing Figgins to return to his position. In Blame It On The Alcohol, Figgins watched New Directions for their alcohol awareness week performance and seemed happy with the song they chose, TiK ToK. When Brittany vomits because of alcohol consumption, he calls New Directions to his office where he congratulates New Directions for their highly effective fake vomit skit, not realizing it was actual vomit. In Born This Way, Figgins gives Karofsky the green light to start the Bully Whips, and comes with him to apologize to the glee club. Season Three In The Purple Piano Project, Figgins is seen trying to deal with Will and Sue, who are once again waging war over the Glee Club. Figgins plays a minor role in Asian F, during a meeting with Mike Chang and his father. Mike's father expresses concern over Mike receiving an A- on his Chemistry quiz, and speculates that his son must be on drugs. Figgins offers a counterargument, stating that Mike is one of McKinley High School's star pupils. Figgins later expresses his contempt for Tina, saying that "Tina Cohen-Chang and her vampire ways have no place in this school." Figgins returns in Pot O' Gold. After a slanderous episode of Sue's Corner in which Sue publicizes the budget for the school's production of "West Side Story" ($2,004), Figgins finds himself in hot water. McKinley High parents are outraged at the amount of money being put toward the musical rather than educational classes, prompting Figgins to cancel the performance. Figgins then informs Will that the musical may continue only if Will is able to raise the necessary funds on his own. In I Kissed a Girl, Figgins returns once again. The race for McKinley High's new class president has come to a close, and Kurt is the apparent winner by 190 votes. However, this number of votes is larger than the number of students in the Senior class, meaning that the ballot box was stuffed. Figgins is initially suspicious of Kurt, seeing as the box was rigged in his favor, but Rachel later comes forward, confessing that she was the one who stuffed the box. Figgins has no choice but to put the incident on Rachel's permanent record, in addition to suspending her for a week and banning her from competing at Sectionals, this year. Figgins returns in The Spanish Teacher, where he receives a complain about Will's teaching from Santana. He advises Will that a tenure position has opened up, and he needs to be a better Spanish teacher to receive it. Figgins suggests learning Spanish. Later, he receives a complaint from Becky about Sue losing her focus on the Cheerios. He then has Roz Washington demonstrate some new moves with the Cheerios. At the end of episode, Figgins gives tenure to Emma because of her popular pamphlets. In Heart, Figgins sees Brittany and Santana's kissing in the hallway. He takes them to his office and tells them that he has received complaints about their PDA in public. He says he does not mind, but he doesn't want to offend anyone. Santana is still offended though and storms out of his office. After Karofsky's attempted suicide in On My Way, Figgins, Sue, Will and Emma meet in Figgins' office to discuss how to handle telling the students. He doesn't want to start a suicide epidemic with the students. In Big Brother, Figgins appoints Roz Washington as co-coach of the Cheerios which angers Sue. In Prom-asaurus, Figgins tells Brittany she needs to contribute to the school as Class President or he will strip her of her title & she will not be able to graduate. He tells her that she could contribute by planning the Prom. Later he dances around to the What Makes You Beautiful performance. At the end of the prom, he announces that there aren't snakes in the school's toilets any more & he introduces last year's Junior Prom Queen Kurt Hummel and then announces Finn and Rachel as Prom Royalty. In Nationals, after winning Nationals, Finn and Rachel, the Prom King and Queen, are sent to his office. Figgins tells them that he wants New Directions to sing at the hext assembly. The assembly is in the Auditorium, where Mr. Figgins finally gets the control of the microphone and gives it to Finn and Rachel, who announce the Teacher of the Year Award winner, Will Schuester. Roz proposes to Sue in Goodbye that they should unite forces against Figgins, because she thinks he's a bad principal. Later, in the graduation, Figgins is seen calling out the names of the graduates, while Emma hands them their diplomas. Personality Figgins, although at times hard headed and penny-pinching, is by no means a bad guy in the school. For the most part he is a reasonable administrator whose chief concern is the smooth running of his school and what is best for the students. He also says that he wants a safe and stable learning environment for everyone in the school. Of course, if he can save money, he's more inclined to do that. Figgins does his best to make everyone happy, suggesting many compromises and for the most part offering people second chances, rather than just outright punishing them. It's revealed that he goes to therapy, which is why he's so willing to do this, as he wants everyone to be nice to each other. He will often invoke his therapy in his administrative methods, such as making Sue and Will hug after they have a blow out argument. In Theatricality, it is discovered that he has an irrational fear of vampires. He tells Tina not to dress in a goth fashion, so she tells him that if he does not let her dress like a goth, her father will bite him. Figgins is unfortunately easily bullied by Sue, who often uses blackmail to get what she wants. This usually plays into her favor for a period of time, until Figgins can at last build up the courage to take away her power. For example, a questionable video she got access to, he in the end put it on YouTube himself before she could. Another example is'' his willingness to confess to his wife about a supposed one-night stand with Sue, rather than let Sue use it as blackmail. Overall, Principal Figgins is caring about the school, staff, and students and pursues his passion – but his weak spot is that he is easily blackmailed by Sue and even Tina Cohen-Chang. He is seen to be slightly slow to the truth. Relationships Mrs. Figgins Mrs. Figgins is Principal Figgins' wife. She has not yet appeared in the show, but Sue threatens to tell her Figgins "slept" with her (although Sue really just drugged him, stripped him, and put him in bed and laid down next to him to make it look like the slept together). Sue Sylvester Although they have not had an actual relationship, after being suspended, Sue took Figgins out to dinn er, with Figgins assuring her he wasn't going to back down about her suspension. Sue then proceeds to slip a date-rape drug into Figgins' champagne after which he wakes up in bed naked, next to Sue, who then threatens Figgins to tell his wife about their 'night'. Whether she actually had sex with him is unknown. Following the New Directions' loss at Regionals, Sue relinquished this blackmail in exchange for giving New Directions another year. Quotes Trivia *He has been Principal for 19 years. *He has been blackmailed twice by Sue. *He believes vampires are real, and still believes Tina is one. *He once modeled for a Mumbai Air video demonstrating how to put on anti-clotting stockings. *He calls Ke$ha "Ke-Dollar-Sign-Ha". *His email address is GettinFiggywithit@aol.com and his password is "1234" (revealed in Funeral). *He wears Drakkar Noir cologne. *The door of his office opens to the inside ''and ''the outside. *He's not a good actor (as seen in Welcome to McKinley). *His favourite band is Air Supply, and the New Directions are his second favourite. *Said he would rather see Brittany and Santana kissing in the hallways than Finchel. (Heart) *Is a Christian. *Figgins makes a cameo appearance in ''The Glee Project's second season music video for "Here I Go Again". Category:Characters Category:Minor Characters